


The One Where Lenore Is Literally Rachel Green

by HelgaHufflepunk



Category: Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party (Web Series)
Genre: BUT WHEN DO I EVER, DO I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING???, F/M, Modern AU, No i do not, roommates au, the answer is no
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8440912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelgaHufflepunk/pseuds/HelgaHufflepunk
Summary: A broken engagement. An awkward poetry vlogger. A lot of broke millenials just trying to get by. Alternatively titled: Lenore's Tell-All Account of Life With Edgar Allan Poe





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at, like, one A.M. because I was watching the livestream and dying and I wanted a happy thing after the finale, so here you go. A modern!au where no one dies (probably) and everyone is happy (for now???).

Lenore meets Edgar Allan Poe approximately two months after she broke off her wedding, Rachel-Green-style. It’s Annabel who suggests it - “Edgar’s been looking for a roommate since his friend Fyodor moved out,” she had explained. “He needs someone to help pay the rent.” - and maybe that’s why Lenore takes up the offer. Or, like, even _considers_ it, really.

Annabel has been her bestie since they were _kids,_ and plus, she’s, like, the sweetest girl to ever live. Ever. There’s no way she would recommend for Lenore to move in with a crazy, or a murderer, or an unhygienic weirdo.

 _Well,_ Lenore thinks, looking up into Edgar’s scowling face. _At least he doesn’t look unhygienic?_

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Lenore.”

His eyebrows furrow even further, if possible. She watches his chin tuck into his neck. “Annabel’s Lenore?”

“Um. Sure?”

He stares for a moment longer.

 _He looks like a ruffled owl when he makes that expression,_ she thinks to herself. _Like the one from The Sword In The Stone._

“Are you gonna invite me in, or…?” she asks, finally, and he does a kind of jerk of surprise, but only in his shoulders - which shoot up - and his general head - which seems to lean far, far back away from her.

“Ah,” he says. “Yes. Uh, I mean - please do! Come in, I mean. I was just - recording a video.”

He steps back, tensely, and she takes a moment to curse Eddie before stepping through the doorway. Why did he have to move in with Annabel? Why did she have to dump his brother at the alter? Why did she have to be in _this_ situation?

She was a Rachel without a Monica. Or, rather, she was a Rachel whose Monica was already dating someone and had decided to let her live with the old guy from the first seasons, the one that lived a floor above or below or _whatever_ and complained about the noise all the time, until he died, and then Chandler had that crisis about becoming him, and -

“Oh, yeah,” she says, shoving her thoughts into some far, far away little wardrobe in the back of her mind. “Annabel mentioned that. You’re a vlogger, right?”

His chin dips down again. “Ah,” he says. “Yes. Yes, I - I took it up in college. And I’m an English Major, so my job prospects - they were very low. _Are_ very low. They are still - that is. I did not have many options. Is what I mean.”

“Aren’t vloggers supposed to make a lot of money?” she asks, eyeing the apartment. It’s nice, but it’s not, like, _extravagant,_ or anything. No glass walls or modern furniture, like you see popular vloggers having, nowadays.

“Not...necessarily.”

“Oh,” she says. “Bummer.”

Another bob of the chin. She wonders what it’s like, to be that awkward around people all the time. She can see why Annabel likes him - he’s just the kind of weird recluse that Annabel finds endearing, like her friend - Erma? Emma? Ella? Lenore can never really remember. They’d only met, like, once, back in college, in passing, when she had gone to visit Annabel, back when they were roommates.

“So, I’m gonna be real with you,” Lenore says, turning to Edgar, folding her hands in front of her. “I’ve never _actually_ done this whole roommates thing before - like, with someone unromantic, and _especially_ not with someone I don’t actually know, because that’s kind of totally cray. You seem weird, and kind of awkward, but I have literally _nowhere_ else to go, and your place is close to Annabel’s, but you don’t look like you’re a criminal, or anything. I’m sort of in between jobs at the moment, because of the move and all that jazz, but I have money saved up and I can pay at least two months’ worth of rent right now.”

He blinks. “I’m not sure…”

“The thing is,” she says, “I get that this is weird, and we don’t know each other, except through Annabel, but I’m a pretty cool person - scratch that, I’m an _awesome_ person - and I won’t get in your way, or anything, and Annabel can totes vouch for me there. I left my fianc é at the alter. I legit have nothing else to do, otherwise I _promise_ I wouldn’t be here, begging you to let me stay here. And I know you have no reason to trust me, or whatever, but I don’t think living with you would be completely unbearable.”

He stares out at her from under his furrowed eyebrows. Opens his mouth. Closes it.

“I had interview questions prepared,” he says, after a moment.

“Seriously?”

“Yes.” He pauses; frowns; looks down at his shoes - brown leather, worn, like he’s some kind of nerdy English professor, or something. “I spent quite a long time on them, actually.”

“Okay,” she says, drawing the word out. “What are they?”

“Well, I was going to start by asking what you studied in college,” he says. “And then your age. Aspirations, maybe. Hopes for the future. I had planned for a little small talk, or something. How you feel about ravens.”

It’s her turn to stare, now. “Ravens?”

“Ravens,” he confirms.

“Why ravens?”

He looks off somewhere behind her, his lips turning up in a tiny, wistful little smile. “I have found that ravens are the only animal truly able to capture the poetic spirit,” he says. “They’re so melancholic and beautiful...mysterious, like a foggy night…”

“Wait,” she says. “You don’t - _have_ any, do you? Like...in the apartment?”

“Unfortunately not.” And dip, dip goes the chin. “There’s a pet ban on the apartment. It is why I gave Annabel Lee a pet rock for her birthday. Because she couldn’t have a cat.”

“A pet rock?” Lenore asks, raising her eyebrows at him. “You’re - you’re kidding, right? Like. You’re not _serious._ ”

“She liked it a lot.”

She opens her mouth to retort, but then stops, because - knowing her bestie, she probably genuinely did.

“Alrighty then,” she says. “Well, I’m totes fine with your ravens. I studied fashion in college, got my Bachelor’s, and my aspirations are to not become homeless and for Sam Claflin to wear a suit I made.”

“And...your age?”

“A lady never reveals such things,” she replies, primly. He nods, once, tensely. She wonders if he’s ever relaxed, and then dismisses the thought, pretty much immediately.

“Are you a serial killer?” he asks, suddenly.

“No,” she says. “But, I mean, to be fair, that’s probably what a serial killer would tell you.”

“That’s true,” he agrees, before the silence rises up and sinks down on them again. And then: “But I doubt Annabel would be best friends with a serial killer.”

Lenore snorts. “Probably not.”

Another beat of silence.

“I’m not really sure what to do now,” he says.

“Me neither.”

He nods. Looks down at his scuffed-up shoes. Looks back at her. “Do you, uh. Want some coffee? Or tea? I have tea. Well. I didn’t, but then Annabel got me tea, because she says that everyone should always have tea in their cupboards. I don’t really drink either, but Fyodor drank a lot of coffee. And a lot, in general. He was a drunk.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” he mutters, moving around the marble counter, into the kitchen. She watches as he shuffles through the cupboards. “It was - it was quite unfortunate. We got along, though. He was a kind man, for a drunk. Though his accent got a little too thick after he drank a certain amount, so I couldn’t understand what he was saying half the time. Annabel liked him. So did I. That is to say - we still do. Like him, I mean. He’s not dead or anything. He just left.”

She resists the strong, _strong_ urge to roll her eyes. “Yes, I know. Annabel told me, when she recommended me moving in here.”

“Oh. Yes, of course she did. That - that makes sense.” He stops clattering for a moment; hesitates; turns his head so that he’s kind-of-sort-of talking to her over his shoulder. “She’s - been worried. About you. For the past few months.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I know.”

“Ah.”

“Yep.” She eyes him; notices the way he fidgets with the handle of his mug. “Is that why you agreed to give this a try? Because you know she’s worried about me, and stuff?”

“A little,” he admits. “I’m. Not really good with people.”

“I kind of picked up on that on my own.”

“Ah.”

“Yep. Not really a hard-hitting mystery, that one.”

He fidgets with the mug a little more. Picks it up. Puts it back down.

“If I agree to let you move in...there have to be...rules,” he says.

“Duh,” she replies, before she can help herself. “I mean - yeah, of course. What - what were you thinking?”

“No murder,” he tells her. She raises an eyebrow.

“You seem kind of set on the idea of me being some kind of psychopathic killer, huh?”

He pauses, and then lifts his shoulders in a kind of - tense, half-formed shrug.

“Alrighty then,” she says. “Anything else?”

Edgar takes a moment to think, and then, suddenly: “No eating chips on the couch.”

“What? Why not?”

“Fyodor used to do it all the time,” he says, irritably, the annoyed owl look returning. She can barely see his eyes, when he makes that face; it’s just eyebrows. Eyebrows and nose. “I hate sitting on the couch and finding crumbs. And then I have to vacuum it, and the lady next door always complains about the noise when I vacuum, and - it’s a whole thing, and I hate it, and if you live here, you have to not...do that.”

“Um, alright,” she says. “Is that it? Don’t do murder and no chips on the couch?”

“You pay half of all rent and apartment bills,” he says.

“That’s _kiiind_ of a no-brainer.”

“On time.”

“Done, done, and done,” she tells him. “Does that mean we have a deal? I can move in?”

He hesitates. “I guess so.”

She isn’t quite sure what to do, now, so she just - nods a little. “Thanks. I guess.”

He nods a little, too. Plays with the mug. After a moment, his whole torso jerks, and he slides the cup over a little on the counter, not quite looking over his shoulder at her. “Oh! Um...did you want...tea? Or...coffee?”

“Coffee,” she says.

“What kind?”

She pauses. Guy had always been the one to make her coffee; she wasn’t sure what kind he picked up. She wasn’t sure she wanted the reminder of him, anyway. So. “Surprise me?”

"You got it," Edgar mutters, and it's weird, standing in this apartment, knowing she's going to live here, thinking of life without Guy. She doesn't really think it's going to stop being weird; not for a while, at least. And she has Annabel, so. It'll be okay.

Right?

**Author's Note:**

> Hope??? You??? Liked???? I guess???? Comment or kudos or whatever you like???????


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